Short video app Chingari piques investors’ interest to become India’s answer to TikTok; raises funding

Banned Chinese short video app TikTok’s Indian alternative Chingari has raised $1.3 million in a seed round of funding from AngelList India, Utsav Somani’s iSeed, Village Global, LogX Ventures, and Reliance-owned SaaS startup NowFloats’ co-founder Jasminder Singh Gulati. Chingari has seen a steep rise in downloads ever since the government banned 59 Chinese apps on June 29. The app already has over 1 crore downloads on Google Play Store with a four-star rating. Within around 24 hours of the ban of TikTok and other apps, Chingari had reportedly gained more than 3.5 million downloads. “We never built the business thinking TikTok needs to be banned or will be banned. We had a growth plan before the ban and to co-exist with TikTok. We will continue doing the same. We are doing Bharat specific innovations like giving a platform to crores of Indians to showcase their talent and also win a prize of whopping Rs 1 crore and total Rs 2.55 crores,” Sumit Ghosh, CEO and Co-founder, Chingari app told Financial Express Online.